Flash Player 10 feature: Dynamic audio generation

Adobe have been talking to a number of members of the community about their requirements for sound and bugs related to this. Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert went as far as to create their own campaign to get bugs fixed and it sure have worked. Not only does Flash Player 10 fix the bugs, but it also brings new features to the table.

Audio in Flash have lagged behind and there's been few updates to the feature set. Over time, some of the features have even become more unstable with every release of the player. The "Adobe make some Noise" campaign have ensured that these sound bugs are now the most voted in the Flash Player public bug base.

Justin says "We're really happy that we're build some response to it in Flash Player 10, so what we are going to do is in addition to the existing Sound object, you'll have access to the binary of the sound data which means you can take audio you have in other files and do application level compositing [and effects] and send it back to the Sound object for playback, so you can create new sounds". Combine this with the new loading and saving of files and you can make really complex audio tools that lives online, but plays as if it was a local application. Andre and Joa's Hobnox project is a brilliant example of what Flash is capable of today. Add the new features and traditional software makers will get some serious competition.

We asked Tom some short questions to finish off the talk about audio. Will we get access to the Microphone object as well, so we could read audio straight out of it? "I don't believe so. It's more about the loaded audio content. I don't think you can expect to see this for Flash Player 10". So this is not part of Adobe's "Pacifica" project? "I don't think the two features are currently related".

To learn more about the new Audio Features, make sure you read thesethreeblog entries by Flash Engineer Tinic Uro. Full of code samples and details, these entries gives you all the details you want to know.

Click here to visit Adobe Labs to download and play with the new Player. Click here to see Lee Brimelow explain how to use this feature. This article is part of an interview with Justin
Everett-Church (Flash Player product manager) and Tom Barclay (senior
product marketing manager) from the Adobe Platform Business Unit.